Chapter Text
Milan has this unshakable charm to it.
It’s the people who are rarely indifferent to you, always ready to offer a seat or a hot drink through their stiff lips and rouge cheeks frozen by the cold air. You’ll always feel like you know someone, despite not knowing anyone.
It’s the telephone lines singing down the streets—an unconventional roadmap of sorts. They could take you all over the city if you’d let them. Just managing to find one camouflaging against the night sky is a treat.
It’s the smell of it all. Whether from a quaint little bakery tucked in an unseen corner only the locals know about, or the rich firewood neatly stacked on the side of the street protected with a single heavy tarp, or the few dozen lonely cigarettes that travel through the air like finger waves in the snow. One breath is all you’ll ever need to feel at home.
Risotto does feel rather at home—an impressive feat for such a place. It’s almost as if he’s been here thousands of times before.
“S’just your imagination,” Prosciutto dismisses. Maybe he’s right, but something tells Risotto that he isn’t, for once.
Risotto smiles instead, “Anyway, I thought you hated the cold.”
Prosciutto whips his head to the side, stuffing his hands further into his coat pockets, “I do,” he insists quietly. But his face has been saying the opposite for some time now. Everything about him has.
His normally stiff shoulders are slack, almost to the point of appearing sluggish. His lips play with the cigarette cradled loosely within them, and his eyes have nothing particularly harsh to say. They only watch. Risotto doesn’t know what they watch exactly—not that it matters.
Yet, Risotto can’t help himself, “It doesn’t look that way to me.”
Prosciutto snorts, “Don’t get cocky, Nero,” and Risotto knows he’s being playful. His brows never furrow, and his feet still meet the cobblestone kindly. Like the people Risotto has so thoughtfully observed, his nose stains a perfect coral shade.
Milan has this allure to it that makes even the smallest things feel important. Tomorrow couldn’t matter any less. The night is so alive. Alive like the polka dots of music that trickle from building to building or the moonbeams that sparkle down with the snow.
Prosciutto has never appeared so alive.
Well, maybe that’s a bit ironic, now that Risotto's thinking about it (Grateful Dead could attest to that), but he's not wrong. He’s always had that vibrant, sentimental blue to his eyes and that warmth to his smooth yet bitter skin. Unintentionally or not, he speaks with lenience, despite the things that come out of his mouth which would probably sound harsh to anyone else.
“Or maybe it’s just me.”
Prosciutto cocks a brow, “What?”
Prosciutto has this unshakable charm to him.
It’s his stride that knows exactly where it wants to carry him, accentuated by the click of expensive shoes. It’s his smell, pungent from the cigarettes, but exotic from his cologne.
Maybe the lights of Milan have shaped this familiar yet new way about him, but perhaps it’s Risotto who’s made him so happy. Could Risotto allow himself to think such a selfish thing?
But, Risotto smiles again, “Oh, nothing.”